All of us, dancing
by HotChilliGriffin
Summary: Based on the UK promo for season 2, this is a one-shot about Kate's motivations. Character-based.


**A/N** – I don't own Lost, nor the UK promo for s2. Writing this happened spontaneously over an hour, and it's a little deeper than most of what I write. Please, please, pretty please with papaya on top, review!

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_**All of us have a secret**_

Life is intricate. Life is complicated. Life is definitely not fair.

These are the first things Kate Austen learnt about life. She learnt the first when she was eight, and she thought it was beautiful. The second, she knew at age twelve but didn't understand until she was fifteen. The third, she found out when she was twenty three, and she went to the police to tell them about what Wayne was doing to her mother. They'd told her that Diane would need to come in herself.

Her understanding of these three things changed her. She can keep secrets now. They dig into her and make things so much worse, but it would be doubly difficult to tell the truth.

_**One of us is a hero**_

She had thought she was doing the right thing. She had known otherwise, but she had pretended to herself that what she was doing was the only choice. To kill him, to end his tyranny forever. She was saving her mother, and herself. That's what she thought to herself.

**_One of us is a fraud_**

But that was also how she was lying to herself. She had realised at the last second, when it was too late, what this could mean for her. That her life as she knew it and all the little pleasures that came with it – the farm, the freedom, Tom – were all going to be gone.

_**One of us is a junkie**_

But at that moment, she also felt the giddy rush that came from action, from doing instead of watching. She loved it, and could once more lie to herself. The running was part of it – the complete freedom from driving into the big world and the high that she felt when the wind was whipping her hair around her face and she was speeding along the highway at double the limit.

_**One of us is a cop**_

It ended too quickly. He caught her. And only hours after her brilliant plan went into action, the word 'epilogue' was written at the top of the page. Only for someone to erase it and write 'Chapter Two' instead.

_**One of us is a saint**_

She remembered all her Sunday school lessons. She had to use a different name for each day of the week, and had to come up with names from somewhere. Adriana, Bianca, Helen, Erica, Hannah (she'd loved that), Lucy, Natalie. She'd always avoided the name Abigail.

_**One of us is a sinner**_

And she ran. She let other people weep and die for her freedom. Whatever freedom there was in this – this constant running, constant fear. Crimes stacking up, one after another. Ironic, that most criminals start small and then proceed to bigger and worse things. Kate didn't. She started as low as they came, and went from there.

**_One of us is a __martyr_**

After Tom died. That was her worst memory, the thing that changed her from a not-so-innocent but mostly naive girl into a hardened fugitive. And everything in her that was childish and innocent was inside that plane, that little blue and white toy aeroplane, and she had to get it back. Had to find that innocence because she was hating who she was becoming.

_**One of us is a murderer**_

When Edward Mars finally had her at the end of a gun, he took great pleasure in snapping the cuffs on, and quoting her 'rights'. The sarcasm in his voice told her he didn't think she had any. He had stressed the word _'Murder'_, and she knew that if she could grab the gun off him, if she had time to fire, then she would do it. She would let him die so that she could run. She'd probably steal his car again, too, because what does another auto theft charge matter to a _murderer_?

_**All of us are guilty**_

Her guilt had never been a question between them. But she would never talk to him about it, never openly admit, "I did it". Of course not. Until that night in the tent, only minutes before his last breath would be choked from his body in a final act of mercy. Then she told him, she told him why. Because that was really all he'd wanted to know. He'd followed her, traced her, caught her because he was curious. Why, Kate? Why _now_?

_**All of us**_

...are trapped. And now she was trapped, indefinitely, with no idea whether her sentence here would last a month or a year or for life.

_**All of us**_

...are lying. And the people around her moved and lived and pretended to be happy. They pretended to be alive. It was all a lie, though.

_**All of us**_

...lie and lie and lie. Kate understood it and now accepted it. She lived the lie alongside them, because in each day, while they pretended there was still hope, while she lied, she could tell herself that it was better here, like this. She moved with the camp, didn't oppose it, and let herself be trapped once more by the flow of supposed freedom.

_**All of us**_

...are dancing. She dances, moving silently and smoothly, quickly and with the grace of a leopard. She swings under as an arm comes towards her, moves around in circles when that's where he moves, and dips her head in acknowledgement of the lie. At times she leans forward, as if she wants to kiss him, but twists away, the movement even more erotic.

It's all a dance, a give and take, forward and back, and even if you're tired as hell you have to move your feet in the right pattern or his shoes will hit yours and the pattern will be broken. The lie will be broken, and all of us will be...

_**All of us are Lost**_


End file.
